Jean Barton: Things haven’t changed much in 20 years

Share this:

Pictured is the Tehama County Cattlemen’s Winter Dinner 20 years ago. Seated at head table were Al and Peggy Marenco, Arlo and Faye Stroing enjoying prime rib, with a western dance following the dinner. – Courtesy photo

The 57th edition of our Christmas letter was 2015. Not only do I brag about the kids and grandkids, but include cattle prices, weather, and events.

Twenty years ago, “Jan. 1995 — The Cattlemen’s Dinner, fed 385 with 40 kitchen workers, prime rib. Man of the Year was Dick O’Sullivan of Paynes Creek. CowBelle of Year was Vicki Henderson of Los Molinos. Media Person, Lee Pitts, Livestock Market Digest (LMD). The rain broke a record in Red Bluff, when RB had 3.55” in 24 hrs. Previous record was 1.44” on Jan. 8, 1895. It poured on Kendra’s birthday, the 9th. We had 2” in afternoon, and Kevin had to help his dad get their household furniture up, because Tehama expected to flood. From the 3rd to 16th, we had 17.2 inches of rain. ( In 2015, I measured 11.75 inches for the entire year.)

Linda said it rained everyday of RB Bull Sale, with big crowds but bull prices were down $ 600. Bill and I were in Nashville for the Cattle Industry Convention.

As Lee Pitts wrote in LMD, “the rain wouldn’t stop falling from the sky and still they came…cattlemen from far and near to sample the best of what the West had to offer….Sure, the bull sale average was off from last year’s record, but then so is the cattle market. And 53 more bulls were offered this year than last; that’s a sizable 20% increase in bull numbers. More dogs, horses and heifers sold as well. Activities were overflowing with people and enthusiasm, despite miserable weather. (If you can call rain miserable.)”

I heard the water was running through the trade show pavilion. “318 bulls averaged $ 2,007. High selling bull was an Angus from Fresno State at $ 4450 to Jamie Kibler. 94 Angus av. $ 2297. Volume buyers were ZX Ranch, Jack Owens Ranches, Dye Creek and Rana Creek Ranch. This year’s Jack Alford award to Wayne Pugh, as top consignor. The Jack Owens Ideal Range Bull went to Bill Reeves’ Flying R Ranch, Gerber on a Hereford bull.

Champion first calf heifer pairs, were 20 black pairs with calves at side sired by Tehama Angus Ranch bulls, and bred back to Tehama bulls and Dal Porto Angus bulls. Tom Vestal, McArthur, sold these 20 head to Traynham Ranch for $1,150 a pair. 117 pairs averaged $1,066.

The Stock Dog Sale by Lee Pitts: “If I paid $7,500 for a dog like Ken Elwood did at Red Bluff, I’m afraid the dog would never see the out of doors. He’d be under armed guard at all times. He’d eat beef steak 3 times a day. The 1/2 Border Collie 1/2 Kelpie cross from Crystal Rose Stock dogs that Elwood purchased was perhaps the best dog ever to show at Red Bluff, for sure he was the highest selling. Scoring 168 for two days work, the dog easily outdistanced the competition. Still, $7,500 is a lot of money for a dog named Buba! The crowd went wild during both days that Buba penned his cattle and displayed his many talents. This reporter has never seen a dog work cattle better, and he was simply the best.” 15 dogs av. $2,246.

“The horse sale was also down $600 from last year, but more horses were sold. 116 geldings av. $4,110. And you must keep in mind that last year’s average was up $1,000 over previous years. Such is the demand for roping, team penning and usable ranch geldings that people came from as far away as KY and SC to bid. $15,000 for a 7 year old sorrel tobiano was paid by B. Hundley, Versailles, KY to Shad Platt, Lockeford. The ranchers in the crowd this year were a little more reluctant to pay $5,000 for a gelding, but the recreational ropers and urban horse enthusiasts picked up the slack making this one of the truly remarkable sales of its kind anywhere in the world.” 4 mules av. $2,413. More than 3,000 people paid $10 each to attend the horse sale. It rained about 4.1” that week of bull sale.

Feb. 1995. The new airport in Denver finally opened, after many delays.

March 1995. On 9th, a hard rain and wind all night. I emptied 3.3” for 36 hours at 5:30 a.m., then Bill and I drove to Sacramento for a California Farm Bureau Public Lands meeting. We drove at 55 mph with wipers on high, but at Williams, I-5 was closed due to flooding, so we drove east to Colusa, and to Yuba City on Hwy. 20. Arriving 1 hour late. It was a good meeting with 38 ranchers present, from all over California that graze on public lands. They all had tales of horror dealing with the Forest Service on their permits. I-5 was still closed when we started home, and did fine coming up Hwy 99-E till we got to Los Molinos, and then it was convoy in five different areas.

That was when the Salinas River overflowed and cutoff the Monterey peninsula. Monterey Co. had $241,436,000 damage, with 16,953 acres of broccoli, cauliflower, leaf & head lettuce and artichokes lost.

The almond industry statewide suffered an estimated $208 million in damage from the high winds. Kevin lost about 350 mature trees when they blew over.

The Endangered Species Act (ESA) enforced by US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) was making life miserable for everyone during the spring. Ten new species were being proposed for endangered status: Chinese camp brodiaea, the Mariposa pussypaws, the Mariposalupin, Kelso Creek monkey flower. Proposed for threatened status were the Rawhide Hill onion, the carpenteria, the Springville clarkia, the Greenhorn adobe lily, the Piute Mountains navarretia and the Red Hills vervain. They are plants native to the foothill woodlands from Tuolumne County south to Kern and Tulare County.

Kern Co. rancher Mark Mebane questioned how the wildlife service obtained much of its survey date on the endangered plants. The Ken Mebane ranch has 5 of the known populations of the Greenhorn adobe lily. Citing information taken from California native plant survey forms, he said it appeared that surveyors knowingly trespassed several times on the Ken Mebane ranch, which his family owns. Mebane said visitors to the ranch are greeted by a 4 ft. “no trespassing” sign and then must drive another 10 miles through ranch property before seeing another warning sign. The surveyors completing the forms even diagrammed a barbed wire fence, which they had to cross to inspect the plants.

Mona Carver, a Kern County rancher who has followed adobe lilies since 1937 said it is because of grazing that the lily has done so well. “If you want to get rid of the lilies, just fence them off.” From her observations throughout the years, she said it appears that rainfall, and not grazing, has the greatest impact on the lilies. But in years where the rainfall is less than 4.5 inches by March 1, the ranch has few lilies. In years with plentiful rain, thousands of lilies sprouted on the hillsides.

And I do agree with her observations. This year the Mariposa Lilies on our range were abundant and gorgeous. There were Mariposa Lilies in yellow and white in huge beds, instead of a few here and there. Some plants had 3 — 5 blossoms, instead of the usual single flower.

Another example of EPA trying to shut down a business, was when they slapped a cease & desist order on Simpson Paper Co. claiming they illegally operated a 10,000 acre eucalyptus plantation south of Corning near I-5. The tree farm was planted in 1988 with all the proper permits. But the EPA lawyer Ann Nutt contended that Simpson was plowing under wetland, and violated the federal Clean Water Act.(WOTUS). (You remember the red gravel rolling hills where the trees are planted. Wetlands? EPA officials issued 2 search warrants: One Jan. 25 at Tehama County tree farm, and another Feb. 3 at Simpson’s corporate headquarters in Seattle. Simpson plans to start harvesting the trees in 1996 for their pulp mill in Anderson. Son-in-law Kevin wrote a letter to editor a couple days later, and we received lots of compliments on it.”

Things haven’t changed in 20 years. Cattle prices are down, it is raining, and we are still fighting WOTUS, EPA, ESA, NEPA, BLM and Forest Service grazing permits. Tonight is the annual Cattlemen’s Winter Dinner; bull sale is coming.

Jean Barton has been writing her column in the Daily News since the early 1990s. She can be reached by e-mail at jbarton2013@gmail.com.